Check out this group of selected abstracts.
Couldn’t make it to Chicago for the recent ASCO meeting? Fear not, because Oncology Republic has hand-picked up some of the most important and potentially impactful abstracts for you to catch up on over your next coffee break.
Checkmate, renal cell carcinoma
Combining immune checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab with ipilimumab as a first-line treatment approach in acute renal cell carcinoma results in long-term improved overall and progression-free survival, according to Professor Toni Choueiri, co-leader of the kidney cancer program at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Centre.
Presenting the final analyses from the phase 3 CheckMate 214 trial, with a median nine years of follow-up data – the longest recorded follow-up of an ICI combination in aRCC patients – Professor Choueiri reported that the nivolumab-ipilimumab combination led to better overall and progression-free survival in both intermediate/poor-risk and favourable risk patients when compared to sunitinib.
The median overall survival and probability of overall survival after nine years were greater for patients who received the nivolumab-ipilimumab combination compared to patients who received sunitinib among the intermediate/poor-risk (47 months versus 26 months; 30% versus 19%) and favourable risk (78 versus 67; 35% versus 22%) cohorts.
The progression-free survival results were similarly positive in the immediate/poor-risk group (median survival 12 months versus nine months; probability of progression-free survival at 96-months 25% versus 9%), but less so in the favourable risk group (13 versus 29; 13% versus 11%).
No additional treatment related deaths occurred in either arm, according to Professor Choueiri, who concluded that nivolumab with ipilimumab should remain the standard of care for patients with aRCC.
Early data suggests bispecific antibody plus chemo beneficial in pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma
Data from 31 patients with mesothelioma of the pleura or peritoneum who received BNT327/PM8002, and investigational bispecific antibody, as well as chemotherapy showed encouraging efficacy, according to researchers from the Jilin Cancer Hospital in Changchun, China.
As part of the single-arm, open-label phase 2 study, patients with unresectable, malignant mesothelioma and a life expectancy of at least 12 weeks received four to six cycles of 30mg/kg of BNT327/PM8002 along with 500mg/m2 of pemetrexed and intravenous platinum chemotherapy every three weeks, followed by a maintenance dose of BNT327/PM8002 every three weeks.
The majority of patients (23/31) had a malignant pleural mesothelioma, with the remaining eight having peritoneal mesothelioma. Baseline characteristics were similar between the two subgroups.
Related
Across all patients the median duration of response was 15.2 months, with peritoneal mesothelioma patients having a greater duration of response compared to pleural mesothelioma patients (16.3 months versus 11.8 months). Median progression-free survival was 16.7 months, with a greater proportion of peritoneal patients achieving progression-free survival at 15 months compared to pleural (83.3% versus 50.3%).
The researchers highlighted the need to interpret the results with caution given the small sample size, especially for the peritoneal mesothelioma subgroup, but felt their findings were scientifically meaningful.
BNT327/PM8002 targets both PD-L1 and VEGF-A in the tumour as well as the broader tumour environment, where it aims to restore effector T cell function, reverse the negative impact of VEGF signalling on immune cell infiltration and normalise tumour vasculature.
Studies have provided additional evidence of the antibody’s safety and efficacy in other groups of cancer patients, including small cell lung cancer, although this was the first phase 2 trial in the setting of malignant mesothelioma.
Viral immunotherapy reduces risk of recurrence and death in prostate cancer
Patients with intermediate- to high-risk localised prostate cancer are typically offered a combination of surgery, external beam radiation and androgen deprivation therapy. Roughly one in three men undergoing EBRT experience a recurrence of their cancer, which requires ADT and other salvage therapies that have a negative impact on their quality of life.
Professor Theodore DeWeese, dean of the medical faculty and CEO of John Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, presented the results of a phase 3 trial designed to determine whether injecting CAN-2409, an investigational viral immunotherapy based on the adenovirus gene construct that leads to immunogenic cell death, into the prostate before treating with valacyclovir was superior to placebo with respect to disease-free survival or death.
Over 700 prostate cancer patients who were planning to receive EBRT with or without a short course of ADT were randomised to receive three injections of either CAN-2409 placebo and 14 days of valacyclovir. Prostate biopsy was performed two years after EBRT, and the median follow-up time exceeded 50 months.
The likelihood of prostate cancer recurrence or death was reduced by 30% in patients treated with CAN-2409 compared to patients who received the placebo injections in their prostate. This figure increased to 38% when non-prostate cancer-related deaths were excluded. A greater proportion of patients in the CAN-2409 group also displayed a complete pathological response in the two-year biopsy (80.4% versus 63.6%) compared to patients who received placebo.
“These data represent the first potentially new therapy for patients with intermediate- and high-risk prostate cancer in over 20 years,” Professor DeWeese concluded.
A new second-line therapy for small cell lung cancer?
The results of a trial comparing whether tarlatamab is more effective than chemotherapy in the treatment of patients with small cell lung cancer whose condition had progressed during or after an initial course of platinum-based chemotherapy were presented at the meeting while also being published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Some 500 small cell lung cancer patients were randomised to receive either tarlatamab or conventional chemotherapy (i.e., topotecan, lurbinectedin or amrubicin). Tarlatamab outperformed chemotherapy on the primary outcome, overall survival, with a median of 13.6 months compared to 8.3 months.
Significant improvements were also seen in key secondary outcomes for patients receiving tarlatamab compared to regular chemotherapy, including progression-free survival and cancer-related dyspnoea, while the rate of adverse events was lower in the tarlatamab group compared to the chemotherapy group.
Tarlatamab is a bispecific delta-like ligand 3-directed T-cell engager immunotherapy that was granted accelerated approval for use in patients with previously treated small cell lung cancer as part of the current phase 3 open-label study.
The 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting was held in Chicago from 30 May to 3 June.
